Leave the Nest and Fly North for Winter
by Drag0nst0rm
Summary: Nearly a century before the Bat roams Gotham, Diana is perfectly safe from the taint behind her people's walls. Naturally, she decides to leave that safety and head right into the thick of it. (Companion to "And What Will Poor Robin Do Then?" and "The Cuckoo is a Fine Bird.")


**A/N: I don't own Wonder Woman.**

 **When I first knew the movie was coming out, I thought I'd be writing a lot for it.**

 **That . . . didn't happen, for a variety of reasons that you probably don't care about it. For this AU, however, I couldn't resist.**

* * *

Themyscira had once been one of the greatest cities of the high magic, rivaled only by Krypton.

It still was, really. Only there had come a point in the war against the taint that the Amazons had said _enough_ and retreated behind walls of magic.

The taint couldn't get in. Nothing and no one could get in.

And no one ever chose to go out.

* * *

The first time Diana sees someone beyond their walls, she is still small enough to listen to bedtime stories and trust that their fairytale history is true.

The first time Diana sees someone outside their walls, she looks up trustingly and says, "Will we help them, Mother?" She is confident she knows the answer.

She is wrong.

Hippolyta's grip on her shoulder tightens. "It is a trick of the taint," she says sternly, "not a person. To open the gates would be to doom us all."

Her mother leads her away, hand gripped tightly over hers, but Diana sneaks back that night. By that point, the man's screams have fallen into quiet moans.

The moans finally die away. When they do, the man vanishes into green smoke.

* * *

The second time Diana sees someone beyond their walls, she trusts her mother's judgement. They are not real.

But the woman who collapses at their gates is holding a baby, and she can't look away.

The mother's pleadings die quickly. The baby's wails last much longer.

No matter how long she waits after the wailings stop, they never vanish into green smoke. Instead, the birds come for them.

When Diana realizes the truth, she confronts her mother.

The queen sighs. "Some of them are real," she admits. "But we have no way of knowing which ones. I will not risk our people for strangers." She kneels in front of Diana and cups her cheek. "The whole world is tainted, dear one. If we are to preserve what precious little remains, we must stand firm."

Diana runs away. Specifically, she runs to the walls. She runs along the top of them, all the way around the city for the first time in her life.

She knows now that those aren't stones in the grass.

* * *

Her people are safe, but it is not enough.

They have the power to help. How can they not use it?

There is a map in the library. The cities of the Spiral shine like lights on it, but they are increasingly surrounded by a dense green fog.

Diana watches it solemnly as she grows.

Some of the lights are swallowed by green. Some of the lights go dark.

Their light is surrounded by a protective dome that she pokes at when no one is looking.

* * *

The more time that passes, the fewer the people that come to them seeking aid. Since all that came were ripped apart by the furious swirling of the taint just outside their walls, Diana is glad of this.

This does not stop the taint from sending them ever more piteous illusions.

Diana knows they cannot open their gates to tricks of the taint. But she cannot help thinking of all those cities that do not have the magic of their walls.

This is what the taint wishes to do to them. This is what it is already doing to some among them.

Constructs of the taint neither need nor deserve help. But the people beyond - Is it not their duty to help them?

And while Diana knows no one can be allowed to enter Themyscira, their spells will not break should someone choose to leave it.

* * *

Her mother refuses her proposal immediately, no matter how fiercely Diana argues with her.

Diana waits until night falls and then sneaks into the armory. She takes blessed armor that she hopes will allow her to survive the wall of taint around them and a golden cord that will reveal truth and illusion.

She is tempted by a sword her mother said could kill even the greatest creatures of the taint, but in the end, she leaves it. There are multiple sets of blessed armor, and there are other methods of revealing truth from illusion, but the sword is a unique weapon, and she will not deprive her people of it.

She has a pack of supplies already prepared. There is nothing left to delay her from entering one of the long abandoned portals and letting it take her outside the wall.

Nothing, except for her mother's presence there.

"Diana. If you make this choice, you will never be able to return."

Diana makes it anyway.

* * *

She finds a man named Steve who is returning from a failed mission to gather aid to save his beleaguered city of Albion. The taint is surging around it, and he is certain they will soon be overrun.

He is choosing to return anyway.

Diana approves of this kind of courage and elects to join him.

Initially, he protests. A quick demonstration of the high magic is enough to change his mind.

* * *

Albion is like nothing she's ever seen before.

Themyscira is a center of learning dedicated to training women in the magical arts. It draws the talented from all cities - or had before they shut the gates. There are no men there, and, subsequently, no children, with herself as the single former exception.

Albion is massive and dirty and visibly cracking under the strain of the tent. Jagged holes that looked almost gnawed out are ripped through walls. The injured are gathered in desperate makeshift hospitals. The warning bells run together with the tolls for the dead.

But there are children there. Tiny faces peering out from blankets in their mothers arm, blinking at her with enormous eyes. Small groups of tiny people looking wide eyed up at the older children who have been told to watch them. Older children telling stories in ragged voices and whispering reassurances to those small groups.

There are not many of them. All of them are laden with so many protection charms that they sound like armor collapsing when they move.

She has made the right choice.

* * *

Albion's council is too desperate not to accept her. Steve is assigned to help her however she needs. Steve, once he realizes how often she charges into battle, quickly recruits others to help with the task. There's Chief, a black market trader who is one of the few still willing to brave this city, Sameer, an actor pulled from his theater group - or his grifter team, depending on who is telling the tale - to fight in the militia, and Charlie, a once expert archer who saw something so terrible in the taint that he can no longer sleep without aid, and all the aid does is keep him from waking when he screams.

Steve tells her they're some of the best left in the city. He is holding the cord when he says this.

* * *

Every night the taint's creatures come, and every morning it tries to leave its insidious tendrils behind. Always, however, it rears back from her high magic.

She is its natural enemy, and she will no longer allow it to do as it wills.

* * *

She has been convinced from the beginning that there is something terribly familiar about the taint's tactics here. It has all the hallmarks of the work of an ancient being called Ares. Records in Themyscira are scarce on him, but since he is both monstrous and powerful, he must be a being of the taint. If she can kill him, the surge will end.

Before that happens, though, she leads a charge directly at a rift where the leader of those fallen irrevocably to the corruption of the taint, Ludendorff, waits. It is a victory.

And then Steve slams the rift shut.

Only someone with high magic or a connection to the taint can open or shut a rift.

Judging by the slight glow to Steve's eyes, he does not have a latent talent for high magic.

Diana takes a step back.

"Diana?" Steve - or the creature she once thought of as Steve - looks confused.

He has touched the cord that very night.

But then, the cord does not reveal corruption. Only illusion.

"You're corrupted," she says. Her eyes sweep over the rest of the men. All of their eyes are faintly glowing. "You're all corrupted."

Steve's eyes widen, and he takes a step forward, hand out. "You didn't - I thought you knew. I thought everybody knew."

"That you are its creature? That this city has already fallen?" Somehow, his words have twisted past the cord's ability to detect such things. Rage adds volume to her words. She points her sword towards them.

"No!" He looks for help from the others, but they let him speak. "Diana, there's no one this far into the Spiral that hasn't been touched, alright? Nowhere except Ra's city, and that's because he's pulling it all into himself. We don't have that here, so it's touched us, yes, but the city hasn't fallen yet because it doesn't define who we are. We're fighting it, Diana, everyone last one of us who's left. We're not just going to give in and become its puppets."

An immense tearing noise interrupts his frantic flow of words.

"A new rift's forming," Sameer says nervously. "A big one."

Steve's head turns in the direction of the sound. "Diana, we have to go. Now. Can we - "

"No," she says firmly. "I will not follow you into a trap. You are corrupted. _Liars._ I will finish what I came here to do." She will kill Ares.

Steve looks like he wants to argue with her. She does not wait for him to. Instead, she stalks away.

They do not attack her from behind as she half expects them to.

* * *

She does not find Ares.

Ares finds her.

"Hello, Diana."

She whirls around, sword at the ready. A slight, unassuming man stands before her.

"Who are you?" Diana demands.

"Oh, I think you know."

He vanishes.

When his voice next comes, it drifts down from a rooftop. "You should really see the view from here. I've always found it so . . . enlightening."

It takes no effort at all for the high magic to carry her upward. She lands on the roof and lashes out with her cord.

It goes straight through the image of him that she can see, but it lands on his formerly unseen figure a few feet feet off. He dodges the circle meant to catch him. Faster than she expects, he reaches out and snags the end of the cord with one hand.

This one is not an illusion.

He smiles at her. "Look at all the chaos out there. Beautiful, isn't it?"

"I've seen enough," she growls. "Your taint spreads no further."

He laughs. " _My_ taint? My dear Diana, I'm afraid you've quite misunderstood. I am no construct or being of the taint."

"Then you are corrupted like the rest of them!"

"I am not corrupted by the taint." His voice was almost amused. "I would never allow it to take hold of me. Really, Diana. You should know better."

"Tell me what you are," she demands.

He is still holding the cord when he says, "Why, I have the high magic. Like you."

* * *

The rift that is slowly opening is impossibly huge. Steve can hear Charlie struggle to control his breathing as some of the massive horrors inside begin to be revealed. Steve tears his eyes away from them.

"We've got to close it," he says frantically.

"And them?" Chief asks, nodding to the mob of corrupted fanatics who have given into the taint.

 _Give in,_ the taint whispers. _It's hopeless. Diana could have done it, but Diana is gone. Or maybe even she couldn't have. She was right, you know. You're a lost cause. Give in. It will hurt less._

Steve grits his teeth. "We fight through."

"That is a bad plan," Sameer says. His voice is a little shrill. He takes a deep breath. "But I'm in. Chief?"

Chief pulls a glass flask from his coat. It's smoking promisingly.

Charlie gives a jerky nod and lines up a shot. He lets it fly just as Chief throws the flask.

The man nearest the rift goes down to Charlie's arrow. The rest are thrown into confusion as bright pink smoke curls around them.

 _Well,_ Steve thinks, _at least it's not green._

They run for the rift.

* * *

"I did not infect this city with the corruption, Diana. That happened all on its own. I am merely cleansing it. Encouraging them into battle so that as many as possible may die before the taint can utterly claim them and use them for its own purposes. They are past saving, so they must be expunged."

His hand is still on the rope.

"I was glad to see you had come here. My own order was destroyed many years ago. I would be glad to have another practitioner to fight alongside again."

Diana no longer knows what to believe, but she is certain of one thing. "This is wrong. What of the innocents? The children?"

"Ah, the children. Kept safe by their childish little magic until even that is not enough. What world do they have to grow into? Even now, even as they age, the taint digs itself in ever deeper. Look at them, Diana. Look at how pathetic they are." He waves a hand, and suddenly the distant cityscape is much closer. Scenes from all around the city whirl around her.

A woman, cornered by creatures with row upon row of jagged teeth, screams. The sound rips, agonized, through the air, and then - She gives in. Her eyes glow bright green as her own teeth elongate -

A ragtag militia desperately fights against a rushing cascade of green beetles that scuttle from the sewers, but the growing mound of insects smothers them, devours them -

A little girl runs with her father through the streets, chased by a being of shadows, and when the little girl twists her ankle, the father gives a moan of fear, drops her hand, and runs on -

"They are lost and pathetic. They no longer deserve our help."

Two groups of militia meet in the dark and turn on each other -

A woman opens a rift in a graveyard and chants as the earth above the graves starts to shake -

"They will fall tonight. Most no longer have the will to fight."

He's still holding the cord, she realizes distantly.

Still holding the cord.

And he has said _most._

She wrenches the spell away from him and turns it towards Steve.

* * *

If the rift opens all the way, they're all dead. Steve knows it. They all know it.

They might be dead anyway. Even with all of Chief's tricks, they're badly outnumbered, and the remaining corrupted have set up their own archers. They've ducked undercover, but it's an open run to the rift from here. No one can possibly make it without getting shot.

And they're out of smoke.

Diana could make it, but Diana's not here.

Steve takes a deep breath.

 _You'll never make it,_ the taint hisses. _Even if you do, what makes you think you can close a rift this large?_

"Go ahead and start drawing straws to decide who goes next," Steve says. "Just in case."

The others look at him.

"Steve - " Sameer says with dawning horror.

Steve grabs a wooden board as a makeshift shield and runs.

Straight across the open. No cover. No real hope.

But he has to try.

The first arrow hits the board. So do the next cluster. When they drag the board down too much for him to run, he's forced to drop it.

The next hits his arm.

He's close now, though, so close, and he can still run with a screaming arm -

The next hits his knee.

He falls. Drags himself forward. Slams his hand down on the edge of the rift and _wills._

He can hear the others shouting.

Something hits like fire in his back. Something hits his hand.

 _Close. Close. Close._

 _You are mine,_ the taint hisses. _You will be mine, or you will die here._

The rift snaps shut.

The corrupted scream. More arrows hail down.

Steve doesn't even have the strength to roll over. He collapses the rest of the way into the filthy street. Something wet that is probably his own blood makes it slick and warm against his face.

 _You will die,_ the taint insists. _You must give in. There is no shame in it. Anyone would in your place._

 _No_ , Steve thinks blearily. _Gotta fight._ He doesn't care what anyone else would do. What was it he had told Diana? _Not just anyone. I'm -_

Another arrow slams down.

* * *

Diana screams.

Ares sighs. "So it goes."

She feels her magic crackling under her skin. She turns to him.

She knows, now, what she believes.

"He fought it. He died fighting it."

"As is the plan."

"And if he can fight it, then they all deserve the chance to." Lightning sparks around her. "The city will not fall tonight."

"It is too late for it," Ares warns her. "They will only disappoint you."

"Then I will help them."

Power begins to crackle around him too. "If you persist on being foolish, I _will_ fight you."

It is his meddling that has brought the city so low so fast. It is his meddling that has killed Steve.

Diana bares her teeth. _"Good."_

* * *

When she strikes the final blow, she half-expects - something. For all the fighting to stop. For the city to be healed.

But of course it is not. There are still hours left in the night, and desperate fights still rage. Steve's shutting of the rift has bought them time, but not enough.

So Diana charges out and fights.

* * *

Without Ares to stir it up, the surge fades. The city does not have peace. It cannot have peace when its members must always be at war with themselves.

But it has something closer to it.

Diana cannot stay. There are so many cities that need her.

But she gives them a way to call on her, and she will come back.

To check on how its war progresses.

And to visit the grave.

* * *

The high magic extends lives as only it and the taint can do. Nearly a century passes.

Krypton falls. So do others.

Some stand their ground.

She begins to hear rumors of another high magic wielder who fights in Metropolis. An alchemist seeking the old ways who manages to give himself unnatural speed. An armorer half-melded with his work by a cruel trick of the taint, who turns it into a weapon against the magic that made it. A prince on a coastal town who fights quite literally for his people. A half mythic Bat who may be tainted, may have the high magic, or who may know mysteries beyond even this.

It is the Bat who sends out envoys saying that he has learned of a great surge coming in the taint, one that will affect them all. If it occurs, they have little hope, but he believes that he and the so called "Superman" have discovered the source. Despite this, it will take an extraordinary fighting force to prevent the disaster.

With this in mind, he suggests that perhaps it is time they all meet.

* * *

 **A/N: I am aware that this ending heavily implies some kind of Justice League based sequel. One of those might well materialize - I'm going to finally have a chance to see it in a few weeks - but it might not. It depends on how I feel about the movie. If it doesn't materialize, just assume that everything goes well and they live as happily ever after as you can plausibly convince yourself.**


End file.
